Pant-like disposable garments, such as adult incontinence wear, infant and children's diapers, swim wear and training pants, typically have adhesive or mechanical fasteners on the sides for donning and removal, or else rely on a stretchable waist opening and leg openings to slide on and off the wearer.
Refastenable seams, including, for example, mechanical fasteners such as hook and loop fasteners, have been found to be particularly beneficial when used in conjunction with pant-like disposable garments. Refastenable seams allow for the garment to be easily applied and removed, as well as periodically opened to check for exudates and closed if no exudates are found. For example, pant-like, “pull-on” style disposable garments can have one or more prefastened, refastenable side seams. Such prefastened, refastenable side seams perform at least two useful functions. First, they maintain the garment in a pant-like configuration during donning and removal. Second, they allow for easy inspection of the internal condition of the garment while on the wearer, and allow for refastening if it is not yet necessary to remove the garment. One means of providing a prefastened, refastenable side seam in a pant-like disposable garment is through the use of a mechanical fastener, such as a hook material.
For vending purposes, it is common for pant-like disposable garments to be stacked and placed within compressed packaging. In certain packaging techniques, it is common for the conventional, bonded side seams of the garments to be disposed outside of the stack of garments in a generally uncontrolled manner, rather than being purposefully tucked within the stack of garments. The conventional, bonded side seams of garments stacked in the former manner can press tightly against the wall of the package due to the compressed nature of the package configuration. These conventional, bonded side seams do not use refastenable fasteners and accordingly are not negatively impacted by this compressive force. This untucked and generally uncontrolled packaging technique would be unsuitable for garments having refastenable seams employing mechanical fasteners such as hook components, however, because the hook material can become tightly compressed between the central portion of the stack of garments and the package wall, leading to creasing/crushing of the hook material. Damage to the fastener material may lead to inferior fastener performance (lower peel and/or shear values than uncreased fasteners). Products with severe and/or multiple fastener creases tend to be most apt to pop open during application and wear.
There is a need or desire for pant-like disposable garments having prefastened, refastenable side seams packaged in a way such that the compressive forces exerted by the package walls do not interfere with fastener performance.